Avoiding Holiday Pounds

In lieu of the upcoming Holidays, I thought I would share this article from the Teambeachbody website. Read here and then sign up for Free Team Beachbody membership to get the newsletter in your own inbox every week!

8 Tips for Avoiding the Holiday Pounds

Stephanie S. Saunders

It's that time of year. The leaves turn majestic hues of red and gold. The air becomes fresh and crisp. We can finally put an extra blanket on the bed and cuddle up with a cup of hot tea. Yes, it's fall. We just spent 8 months killing ourselves to get into that bathing suit, but now we've replaced it with a worn pair of jeans and a much more relaxed attitude towards food. After all, it's the holiday season, and no one'll notice a few extra pounds under layers of clothes. A little extra weight just gives us a New Year's resolution to focus on, right? Wrong. According to a recent study by researchers at Sweden's Linköping University, those 4 weeks of celebrating can actually lead to long-term weight gain.

Essentially, the researchers took a group of healthy young people, increased their caloric intake by 70 percent, and lowered their exercise levels. They also had a control group whose diets weren't altered. At 4 weeks, the participants in the test group had gained an average of 14 pounds. After 6 months, and no longer on an increased-calorie diet, only a third of these participants had returned to their original weight. After 1 year, the test group members were each still an average of 3.3 pounds heavier. After 2.5 years, the "gluttonous" group continued to gain, while the control group still maintained a stable weight.


Now, most of us don't increase our calories that drastically for 30 days straight. Sure, there's Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving leftovers, Hanukkah, the work Christmas party, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day, not to mention the extra sweets, cocktails, and (ahem) fruitcake. But according to the New England Journal of Medicine, the actual average weight gain over the holidays is only 1 pound. (They obviously didn't poll my family or friends.) So what's the big deal? The problem is, a year later, the vast majority of people have not removed that pound. Continue this pattern over 30 or 40 holiday seasons and the problem becomes—quite literally—huge.


So how are we supposed to get through the holidays without causing weight gain? Here are eight effective ways to get yourself ready to beat the holiday bulge.

1. Buy clothes that fit right now. This first tip might be a bit pricy, but it's a great motivational aid in staving off weight gain. A new addition to your wardrobe in a size that shows off your summer body can be all you need to prevent those extra pounds from creeping on. Imagine that beautiful holiday dress or great pair of pants, then imagine being unable to zip them up thanks to sugar cookies. Yeah, no one wants that. So before you begin the festivities, go buy yourself something perfect to wear to your parties and hang it someplace visible, so it serves as a constant reminder. Perhaps on the TV where you play your P90X®videos, or in front of that treadmill that might be starting to collect a little dust in the corner, or on your refrigerator door . . . that way, if it doesn't fit quite the same way the next time you try to slip into it, you know it's time to get back to work.

2. Write it down. We try to write down everything we eat, right? We spend hours each month staring at a food diary, adding up our calories, and seeing if we got the correct balance of macronutrients. And then the holidays happen, and our little book ends up in the bottom drawer. It's almost like we're hoping that if we didn't write it down, it didn't happen. Unfortunately, the scale doesn't fit in that bottom drawer. The truth is, if we would write down the not-so-perfect meals and treats, we could find a way to compensate for it, at least a bit. For example, you have a peppermint brownie in the break room at work, which you know is carbohydrates and fat. Eat one less portion of carbohydrate and one less portion of fat for your dinner. It's not ideal, but it'll help. Or perhaps you couldn't resist Mom's homemade scones for breakfast. You could plan on an extra 20 or 30 minutes of your workout tonight. The point is, if we write it down, and do the math, we can lessen the damage. It isn't a good long-term plan, but to help compensate for a few slip-ups, it can help.

3. Keep exercising. Most fitness trainers will tell you the slowest point of their year is between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Sure, their clients schedule workouts with the best of intentions, but then they cancel them for parties and gift shopping. It's hard to remain balanced when you have a million things to do and gifts to buy. Yet the greatest gift you can give yourself is to stay focused on your fitness goals and get your workout in. Shopping getting in the way? Do it online and save some time. Parties getting in the way? Just show up later. Who cares if everyone else is a couple of cocktails ahead of you? You'll be healthier, and you won't have to worry about the embarrassing YouTube® videos in the morning. Just stay consistent, even if it's inconvenient. You'll be much less likely to look like Santa (both belly-wise and red-nose-wise) at the end of the month.


4. Eat before parties. Most holiday parties don't focus on low-fat, low-calorie refreshments, so unless you're organizing the event, the best damage control is to show up with a full tummy. Make sure you eat your meals and snacks throughout the day, and try to eat a healthy meal before attending any party. If you're going straight from work, prepare a healthy and filling snack to eat on the way. You'll be a lot less likely to swim in mayonnaise dips and pigs in blankets if you're full.


5. Get junk out of the house. The majority of people don't get into the car at midnight, drive to the store, buy the ingredients for cookies, bake them, and then stay up to eat them. But if those homemade cookies that Linda in accounting made for you are already on your kitchen counter, you better believe you'll find a way to justify it. Frankly, at 12:30 AM, after a rotten day, for most of us there's nothing like a few cookies to drown our sorrows. The secret is to get the enticements out of the house. Send them to work with your significant other, donate them to a bake sale, regift them to your 100-pound friend with the perfect metabolism, or just dump them in the trash. Linda will never know. If you have holiday dinner leftovers, box them up for your guests individually and send them home with them. If your family still sends you that Pepperidge Farm® cookie assortment, invite a bunch of people over for a pre-party party and serve 'em up before the drinks. Don't be more wasteful than you have to, but get the less-than-healthy temptations out of your reach.


6. Offer to prepare healthy fare. This suggestion won't be well received by those of us who'd rather spend Thanksgiving sitting around watching football than toiling in the kitchen, but if you do the cooking, you have the control. Your family could have a tasty and satisfying meal without ingesting thousands of calories and fat grams. The way the turkey is prepared, the type of stuffing, how vegetables are made, whether the cranberries are real, and countless other things can make or break the healthiness of a meal. There are tons of cookbooks out there, plus recipes in this and past newsletters, that can help you out. Yes, it does require a bit of work. But you work out with Beachbody® fitness programs. You can do anything.


7. Choose wisely and proportionally. Something occurs during a holiday meal. It's like a Las Vegas buffet—we feel like we have to eat some of everything. We feel almost like those foods will never exist again, and this is our last meal on the planet. This year, why not try to eat only your favorites, as in two or three items, and keep the portions to the size of your palm? If you're still hungry, try to fill up on veggies (preferably ones that aren't drowned in butter or cream-of-mushroom soup). If you want dessert, lean toward a small slice of pumpkin pie (220 calories) as opposed to pecan (a heftier 543), leaving out the hydrogenated nondairy whipped topping if possible. If you're going to have an alcoholic beverage, go with a flute of champagne (100 calories) as opposed to that rum-laced eggnog (with more than four times more calories, at 420). Just a few wise choices will save you a ton of calories, and probably a significant amount of heartburn as well.


8. Don't beat yourself up. Quite possibly the worst thing you can do is beat yourself up over a bit of holiday indulgence. Yes, it does stink to backslide after working your tail off. But sometimes it doesn't stink as much as dealing with your mother when you turn down her brisket and potato pancakes. Sometimes, we don't have time to go to work, buy a Christmas tree, decorate it with our kids, make dinner, oversee homework, tuck kids in bed, and spend an hour doing INSANITY®. We can only do our very best. Mentally berating yourself will only make you feel worse, which never helped anyone get back to their fitness program. So if you happen to gain that one extra pound this holiday season, be part of the rare group who actually follows through with their New Year's resolution and manages to shed it again. A week of hard work and a slight calorie deficit should do the trick. Resolutions don't come easier than that!

10 Foods you should eat

I’m still on the prowl for the “local” power food in my area—A couple blogs ago, I posted something on the Giant Swamp Taro. Now, am browsing for local pumpkins and other squash to add to my Thanksgiving menu.

Steve Edwards, the TeamBeachbody nutrition expert wrote this great article and I love that most or all of these items are in our homes:

10 Foods You Should Eat

By Steve Edwards

We've all heard about superfoods—consumables with mystical powers to cure whatever it is that ails you that will help you live forever. This list will be different. Today, we'll look at some common items that should be on your menu, even though you probably haven't heard them touted as the next great miracle cure. In fact, some of these you probably thought were bad for you.

I begin this list with a caveat; we're all different. One person's superfood is another's trip to the emergency room (soy comes to mind here). There are some nutritional factors we all share, such as the need to eat a certain amount of calories that come from fats, proteins, and carbohydrates to keep our bodies functioning as they should. Beyond this, our exact dietary needs begin to diverge.

There are some obvious reasons for this. Lifestyle and activity level are pretty easy to understand. That someone who is pregnant or training for an Ironman® needs more calories than a computer programmer who sits for 14 hours a day isn't difficult to fathom. Neither is the fact that a 90-pound ballerina uses less fuel than a 350-pound lineman. That we all eat a different number of calories and a different percentage of fats, proteins, and especially carbs is obvious, or at least should be, since the bigger you are and the harder you work, the more fuel your body needs to recharge itself.

What's more subtle are body type differences. These can be difficult to understand, and many people never figure them out. Blood type, heredity, and other factors come into play and make each of us unique individuals. When it comes to eating, most of us spend a fair portion of our lives figuring out just what we should be eating to maximize our life experience (which doesn't necessarily mean we choose the healthiest options). For this reason, there is no true "superfood." There are, however, helpful foods that are specific to each of us. By experimenting with our diets, we will all find a course of eating that makes us feel better than anything else.

To help you begin your self-experiment, here's a list of common foods that you'll want to try. Most of these are very healthy for almost everyone, even though some have been vilified by society. This doesn't mean that they'll transform you into an epitome of health, but they're certainly worth a try.

1. Peanut butter. I'm leading with this because I'm fairly certain peanut butter single-handedly kept me from getting chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) during the no-fat 1990s. In the early 1990s, the average amount of fat in our daily diets plummeted while the incidence of CFS skyrocketed (CFS is the colloquial veil for debilitating disorders marked by chronic mental and physical exhaustion.). This was particularly true among the otherwise healthy endurance sports sect. In the early 1990s, my body fat was once recorded at 2 percent. Sure, I was ripped. Healthy? Not so much. I'm pretty sure that only my adherence to peanut butter as a healthy fat source kept my athletic obsession intact. A bevy of modern studies now vindicates my opinion with science. Peanuts are high in both fat and calories, but their fat has been associated with decreased total cholesterol and lower LDL and triglyceride levels. It's also high on the satiation meter, meaning that a little can fill you up.

2. Cabbage. Every Asian culture, as well as European, eats more cabbage than we do, and it's time we thought about it more often than when we happen to splurge on P.F. Chang's®. Cabbage is absurdly low in calories and very high in nutrients. Among these is sulforaphane, which a Stanford University study showed as boosting cancer-fighting enzymes more than any other plant chemical.

3. Quinoa. This "grain" isn't technically a grain at all. It just tastes like one. It's actually a relative of spinach, beets, and Swiss chard. All of these are extremely healthy from a nutrient point of view, but quinoa is the only one that can fool you into thinking you're eating a starch. It's high in protein, minerals, vitamins, and fiber.

4. Spelt. This one is actually a grain, but its origin is slightly mysterious. Some claim it comes from wheat while others say it's a different species. Regardless, it has a high nutritional profile and can be eaten by many people with gluten intolerance, making it a good alternative to wheat products. Spelt can be found in many products, but as it's still considered a "health food," it's off the major processing radar. Unlike wheat, if spelt is on the ingredients list, it's probably good for you.

5. Walnuts. All nuts, really, but walnuts seem to be the king of the nut family. Used in Chinese medicine for centuries, walnuts are becoming more associated with Western health than ever before. A 2006 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that eating walnuts after a meal high in bad fat could reduce the damaging effects of the meal.

6. Avocado. Another villain in the old no-fat movement, avocados are now thought to be one of the healthiest fat sources available. Beyond this, they have very high amounts of cancer-fighting antioxidants, and recent research seems to indicate that avocados' phytonutrients may also help with the absorption of nutrients from other sources.

7. Mushrooms. The more we learn about phytonutrients—those that come in a small enough quantity to be missed on a food label (this is a layman's definition only)—the more we should admire ancient cultures. These culinary delights have been feuded over for decades until, for some reason, we'd decided they were pretty much empty calories. The study of phytonutrients has taught us that warring over fungi may have held some rationale after all. Mushrooms are loaded with antioxidants and are thought to boost the immune system, help ward off some cancers, and have high amounts of potassium. Furthermore, researchers at Penn State University have found that mushrooms may be the only food to contain an antioxidant called L-ergothioneine.

8. Tea. Despite a ton of positive press over the last, oh, century, tea and coffee are still the devil's brew in some circles. Perhaps even worse is how many coffee and tea restaurants have bastardized these natural brews into sugar- and fat-filled dessert items. Both tea and coffee, in their basic states, have no calories and many healthy benefits. Between the two, coffee is arguably more popular, most likely due to its higher caffeine content. But tea is probably healthier. Both have a high amount of antioxidants but stats on tea are almost off the charts. A recent study on calcium supplementation in elderly women, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that bone mineral density at the hip was 2.8 percent greater in tea drinkers than in non-tea drinkers.

9. Cinnamon. Maybe the novel Dune was more prescient than we've given it credit for. After all, the plot revolves around an entire solar system at war over a cinnamon-like spice. Nowadays, we think of this as little but the flavoring in a 1,100-calorie gut bomb we find at the mall. But Frank Herbert knew a thing or two about history, and cinnamon has long been the prized possession of the spice world. It has a host of benefits, but perhaps none more important than this one: USDA researchers recently found that people with type 2 diabetes who consumed one gram of cinnamon a day for 6 weeks significantly reduced their blood sugar, triglycerides, and LDL cholesterol. "He who controls the spice controls the universe!"

10. Natto. This is on the list because, for one, it's one of the few foods I've eaten that I truly don't like. But mainly, it's here because we've really messed up the way we eat soy. Natto is fermented soybeans and very popular in Japan, which is where I had it. It's becoming more popular here, and this is most likely due to its health benefits. Nearly all the soy options we're offered in the U.S. are non-fermented. The list of health benefits of fermented soy is a mile long. It's associated with reducing the risk of cancer, minimizing the likelihood of blood clotting, aiding digestion, increasing blood circulation, an improved immune system, improving bone density, lessening the likelihood of heart attacks, more vibrant skin, and reducing the chance of balding. It also has strong antibiotic properties, among other things. So you might want to ditch the soy crisps, soy ice cream, and your iced soy mochas, and add some natto to your diet.

Too Broke for Shakeology. Let’s Put This Theory to the Test.

Let me share what I saw on Barbie Decker's website about Shakeology...
Dear Boys and Girls,

In my last post I argued that it was possible to eat clean while on a shoe-string budget. If you haven’t read it, go back and read it, You really can. There is really no excuse. But, after I wrote it, I felt disturbed that I had left out Shakeology from my suggested meal plan, especially given the fact that many of the foods we eat today (particularly our chicken/fish/meat) are of such poor quality. It makes sense that Shakeology would make up for some of the nutrient deficient foods we consume as a society.

But, the question remains: Can you afford it?

If I left it out of my meal plan, then somewhere in my mind I was saying, “No, there is little room for it in a tight budget.” However, somehow that just didn’t jive with me. Let’s do the math together and you decide.

The cost of Shakeology on autoship (you get free shipping) is $119.99. Plus tax, say around $126, for one month’s supply (1 serving a day for 30 days). Each shake comes out to about $4.20. The coach price for Shakeology on autoship is $89.99 or around $96 total. Each serving comes out to $3.20.

Too much you say? Not if you are using Shakeology as a meal replacement, which, by the way, will help you lose weight. Remember: Subjects in a 90-Day study lost an average of 10lbs when they replaced just one meal per day with Shakeology.

The cost of an average lunch at a restaurant or take-out: $6 to $9. Plus, even Subway sandwiches which are reputably low-cal average 460 to 560 calories. Shakeology has 140 calories, less than 1 gram of fat per serving, annnnnnd it is truly nutrient rich.

The cost of an average take out or restaurant dinner: $10 & up to be sure.
The cost of a home-cooked lunch or dinner: 6-8 ounces of chicken = $2.00 (and we are talking low-grade chicken), veggies= $1 (frozen veggies are really okay! hurray!) and 1 sweet potato = from .5 to $1.00. Total= about $3.4.

Conclusion: You are spending about $3-4 on a home-cooked meal, the same amount that you would spend on Shakeology.

So what is the big fuss about then? I think our resistance has to do more with our thinking than our actual ability to afford Shakeology, regardless of budget. Somehow, I’m guessing, many people see Shakeology as a luxury item. But is it really? I invite you to watch the following video.

http://beachbodycoach.com/esuite/home/coachcornelius?bctid=82906800001